Another PlayStation Game Quietly Comes To The PC

While a big deal has been made about some former PlayStation exclusives coming to the PC—like Horizon and God of War—no deal was made last week whatsoever about a game with a much lower profile, but which I love regardless.

That game is Hohokum, which was first released on the PlayStation 4 (and PS3, and Vita) in 2014, and which remains one of most chill video game experiences available. A collaborative work between artist Richard Hogg, developers Honeyslug, and the record label Ghostly, Hohokum is a beautiful 2D adventure where you play as a worm…kite…thing that just floats around its various levels, poking around a colourful landscape just to see what happens.

It’s magic. I love this game so much that amidst all the hardware drama and blockbuster releases making up our roundup of the last console generation, I wrote a whole thing just about this little game, which I described as being—in terms of meeting its ambitions—perfect

You move a big snake thing around a floating landscape, and sometimes you run into things, and sometimes you fly through things. You’re never fighting, talking, nor really doing much of anything.

Yet for Hohokum these aren’t limitations. They’re a canvas.

It’s a game that understands the links between interaction, visuals and soundtrack to a terrifyingly perfect degree. Each is inspired by and reliant on the other two, to the point where once it gets going Hohokum is almost synaesthesic.

Another thing Hohokum is now proving to be is timeless. Eight years on from its original release, its art style hasn’t aged a day, and it technically looks as though it could have been released yesterday. The heavyweight soundtrack accompanying it also sounds as good in 2022 as it did in 2014, no doubt helped by the fact that many of the artists involved—like Tycho—are still killing it today.

So if you haven’t owned a PlayStation in a while and never got to check this out, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Annapurna has published this PC version (which, admittedly, is probably why less of a fuss was made than if Sony had released it), and it’s out on Steam now.